NEW YORK - At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-Gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of an absolute value.

They use secret code names like "X" and "Y" and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

Bill Gates' recent speech at Mount Whitney High School in Visalia, CA is worthwhile reading. Love him or hate him, he sure hit the nail on the head. He talked about how "feel-good" and "politically correct" teachings has created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this is setting them up for failure in the real world. He concluded his speech by outlining the following 11 rules for life:

1. Life is not fair, get used to it.

2. The world won't care about your self-esteem. However, the world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you start feeling good about yourself.

3. You will NOT get $40,000 a year right out of high school, (and you won't be Vice President with a car phone until you earn both).

4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.
Flipping burgers at McDonalds should not be beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping, they called it OPPORTUNITY.

5. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine.

6. Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

7. Your school may have done away with recognizing that there are winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have even abolished failing grades, and they'll give you as much time as you want to get the right answer on an exam. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

8. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. You are supposed to do that in your own time.
9. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go out and find a job.

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Prada suit, Gucci shoes, Dior sunglasses and D+G tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers: "Sure. Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulae.

He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturised HP LaserJet printer, turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly 1,586 sheep".

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep," says the shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car.

Then the shepherd says to the young man:

"Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says: "Okay, why not?"

"You're a consultant," says the shepherd.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie. "But how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you, you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you know sod-all about my business.

Bill Gates' recent speech at Mount Whitney High School in Visalia, CA is worthwhile reading. Love him or hate him, he sure hit the nail on the head. He talked about how "feel-good" and "politically correct" teachings has created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this is setting them up for failure in the real world. He concluded his speech by outlining the following 11 rules for life:

1. Life is not fair, get used to it.

2. The world won't care about your self-esteem. However, the world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you start feeling good about yourself.

3. You will NOT get $40,000 a year right out of high school, (and you won't be Vice President with a car phone until you earn both).

4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.
Flipping burgers at McDonalds should not be beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping, they called it OPPORTUNITY.

5. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine.

6. Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

7. Your school may have done away with recognizing that there are winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have even abolished failing grades, and they'll give you as much time as you want to get the right answer on an exam. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

8. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. You are supposed to do that in your own time.
9. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go out and find a job.